Friday, 10 April 2009

I think I already wrote about it but in case I didn't, here it is: I love to write!When I left uni and while working as a PA for the CEO of a cereal drying factory (no, really!), I started working on a City Hall project to keep kids off the street and preventing them to go into drugs. Every late afternoon, after leaving the office, I would go to my local council headquarters and run a little room full of computers and board games, which would entertain my neighbourhood kids for two hours. I would also organize trips outside of Lisbon, where we would do rock climbing, canyoning and lots more stuff. This was part of a global project made up by Lisbon City Hall and there came a day where they decided it was time to make a magazine about all the activities. And so they invited all the 52 council leaders to undergo a journalim course at Cenjor. I cannot begin to tell you how great it was!! I suddenly found out the joy of writing, and discovered skills I didn't know I had. And to put it short, I was considered so good that the then Mayor himself praised me in front of all my colleagues and representatives of all Lisbon boroughs... and one of my teachers gave me immediately a job at his PR company!

But this has nothing to do with that story, apart from showing my love of writing...

Last year I wrote about being invited to write for a project I absolutely loved: the Spotted by Locals network. When I joined the London team, it was still rather unknown... and look where it is now: we are 80 people spread all over Europe, writing praises about selected spots we love in our cities and the website just won the best group authored blog in Lonely Planet's awards.